Greg In The Desert

The US Federal Trade Commssion is joining the EU and going after Intel on antitrust charges. Updated: link and text changed to the FTC’s website.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued Intel Corp., the world’s leading computer chip maker, charging that the company has illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly.

In its complaint, the FTC alleges that Intel has waged a systematic campaign to shut out rivals’ competing microchips by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In the process, Intel deprived consumers of choice and innovation in the microchips that comprise the computers’ central processing unit, or CPU. These chips are critical components that often are referred to as the “brains” of a computer.

Intel responds. Updated: Link changed to Intel’s official press release.

“Intel has competed fairly and lawfully. Its actions have benefitted consumers. The highly competitive microprocessor industry, of which Intel is a key part, has kept innovation robust and prices declining at a faster rate than any other industry. The FTC’s case is misguided. It is based largely on claims that the FTC added at the last minute and has not investigated. In addition, it is explicitly not based on existing law but is instead intended to make new rules for regulating business conduct. These new rules would harm consumers by reducing innovation and raising prices.”

On Thursday a week ago I went into work and had an large ice tea. I went to Dion’s for lunch (I am not blaming Dion’s for the following, it is very unlikely it had anything to do with them) and had a sandwich. I went home for the rest of the day and had water and some homemade soup while I worked on my house.

Friday morning I woke up about 7 am to go to the bathroom. No problems during the transaction and I went back to bed. At 8:21 am I woke up and looked at the clock and thought it was strange I was dizzy. Then I could feel I going to throw up.

I ran to the bathroom and spent about two hours at the toilet. I had no food in my stomach yet I experienced uncontrollable vomiting. I was extremely dizzy. I was sweating more liquids than I was vomiting and was freezing cold. I became disoriented.

The disorientation is hard to explain but my brains ability to tell which way is up or down was gone. It’s kind of like when a picture is turned on it’s side and it’s difficult to make out until the picture is rotated correctly.

Sometime during my marathon vomiting session I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to get myself up on the toilet and continue to vomit nothing into the tub. Crapping my pants wouldn’t have helped the situation. I am very thankful that didn’t happen.

After about two hours of what felt like a month I managed to stagger my way back to the bedroom. I was still vomiting but I had nothing to vomit so I wasn’t making a mess. It took a lot of concentration and stillness to get my vomiting to stop. Meanwhile I was still dizzy and cold. It was at this point that I considered calling an ambulance but I finally stopped vomiting and I didn’t want to start again by moving.

I managed to text a friend after a while, something about “HELP”. They brought me some crackers and electrolyte liquid. The throwing up stopped about noon on Friday and I spend the next two days eating crackers and mostly drinking water and electrolyte liquids. And sleeping.

Over the next week I had little appetite and it even seems like I forgot what hungry was. I had to force myself to eat real food. I also had body aches and headaches to suffer with.

I’m sure I had salmonella poisoning. I couldn’t be the flu since I didn’t experience a sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever and other flu like symptoms. I could be pregnant but that seems unlikely.

I was already on the weight loss path due to lifestyle changes (as in I’m not dieting) and I can attribute at least 5 lbs of weight loss to the food poising. Although it was nice to get a boost in weight loss I absolutely cannot recommend this method.

• Americans are moving on up to smaller, smarter homes – USATODAY.com – New homes, after doubling in size since 1960, are shrinking. Last year, for the first time in at least 10 years, the average square footage of single-family homes under construction fell dramatically, from 2,629 in the second quarter to 2,343 in the fourth quarter, Census data show.
• Inside Obama’s bank CEOs meeting – Eamon Javers – POLITICO.com – President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

  “My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

• Teach yourself to become ambidextrous! – It seems to me as well that we are meant to use both hands. When we are first born our brains are evenly weighted on both sides. Over time however our brains become heavily lop sided, with a right-handed person’s brain being far larger on the left (we use the opposite side of our brain when controlling our hands). Twin studies where one is left handed and one is right handed, have proven the cause to be our dominant limb. Having learned about brain plasticity at university I know that this is as a result of our brain ‘adapting’ to use, and that by the same principle we could once again enlarge the side that has fallen into dissuse. Scientists have also suggested that enlarging your brain in this way could have knock on effects improving intelligence or creativity.
• Slashdot | ARM — Heretic In the Church of Intel, Moore’s Law – For 30+ years, the PC industry has been as obsessed with under-the-hood performance: MIPs, MHz, transistors per chip. Blame Moore's Law, which effectively laid down the Gospel of marketing PCs like sports cars. But with mobile PCs and green computing coming to the fore, enter ARM, which is challenging the Gospel according to Moore with chips that are low-powered in both senses of the word. Some of its most popular CPUs have 100,000 transistors, fewer than a 12 MHz Intel 286 CPU from 1982 (download PDF). But they also consume as little as a quarter of a watt, which is why netbook makers are embracing them. It's 'megahertz per milli-watt,' that counts, according to ARM exec Ian Drew, who predicts that 6-10 ARM-based netbooks running Linux and costing just around $200 should arrive this year starting in July."
• Barack Obama Maintains Control Over Banks By Refusing to Accept Repayment of TARP Money – WSJ.com – The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.
• Meacham: The End of Christian America | Newsweek Religion | Newsweek.com – The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.
• The Annual Elm Seed Festival – Duke City Fix – We call the the tree parents of this menace, Chinese Elm, (Ulmus parvafolia), but in actuality they are Siberian Elms, (Ulmus pumila). I have heard many stories of how all these elm came to be in Albuquerque, including that Mayor Tingley was responsible, but all I could find was that Tingley planted elms in the University area in the 1930s. Maybe that is all it took, because I have never encountered a plant so prolific. If you don't have them in your neighborhood, give it time. In years to come you will be able to join in this celebration.
• Article limit in Pro. What should it be? – People are using Instapaper in ways I had never envisioned, storing thousands of unread articles. I got a very nice support email earlier this week from someone saying that the Unread page wasn’t working, and he suggested that it might have been because he had 16,000 unread articles. (He was right.) I never anticipated this sort of scale — the most I’ve ever had unread was 72.
• Fewer Calories (Carbs, Protein or Fat) Are Called Weight-Loss Key – NYTimes.com – For people who are trying to lose weight, it does not matter if they are counting carbohydrates, protein or fat. All that matters is that they are counting something.
• No end in sight – It's shocking enough that 90 people have been killed in mass shootings in the US in the past 2 years. But it's even more shocking that 44 of those deaths have occurred within the month since March 10, 2009, when Michael McClendon touched off a firestorm of violence that ended with the deaths of 10 people in rural Alabama. This has been a month of grave infamy in the United States.

Parts of the brain go on the blink every time we blink, scientists have found. By closing down the parts that deal with vision, the brain ensures that blinking is not accompanied by a sensation of blackness.

link

This is really bizarre if it’s true.

The startling figures emerge from studies into toxoplasma gondii, a parasite carried by almost all the country%u2019s feline population. They show that half of Britain%u2019s human population carry the parasite in their brains, and that infected people may undergo slow but crucial changes in their behaviour. Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the %u201Csex kitten%u201D effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun- loving and possibly more promiscuous.